As many crews across the United States are heading indoors for the winter and preparing for Indoor Rowing Championships nationwide, in San Diego we are preparing for the 47th San Diego Crew Classic on April 4 & 5, 2020. Sure we're erging a little bit extra and making sure that we're all going to do well at the Indoor Classic, but we're also getting up, enjoying the sunrise and getting our meters in on the water.
In the Crew Classic offices, we are calling people daily and building both our Men's and our Women's Invitationals. Because let's be honest most of us come for the beer, fish tacos and to watch our favorite teams duke it out on the racecourse.
Collegiate Teams
Men:
The Copley Cup Invitational will be welcoming back Cal and Yale this year and introducing Nereus. Wait though, at least one more top ten East Coast men's team is going to join their ranks for three sets of duels with the top points scorer winning the Copley Cup.
According to Nereus coach, Joeri Bruschinski, "Everyone is super excited to come to San Diego and race against some of the greatest university eights during racing season. For 8 out of 9 crew members, this will be their first time rowing in the USA, and they have been making more miles than ever to make the most out of the opportunity." They beat a Harvard Varsity boat at Henley last year, let's see if they can give Yale and Cal some competition for the Copley Cup this year.
The American Specialty Health Cup is happy to have last year's victors Purdue University returning to defend their title and last year's second-place boat UCSD showing up to see if this is the year they will take the cup home. UCSD did sweep Western Sprints last year, can they close the two-second gap from last year? Keep in mind there are at least ten other boats right behind these two leaders, as Orange Coast College and MIT are possible contenders as well.
Women:
That brings us to the Women's Jessop-Whittier Invitational where we will have eight boats racing, starting with two heats of four and finishing with a six-boat grand final and a two-boat petite. We are happy to announce that we will also have Cal returning to defend their title with current NCAA champs University of Washington there to try and deny them a third win in a row. With Texas also joining and Stanford's Lightweight women, current National Champs themselves, it should be a race to remember.
Finally, amongst the 1V boats, we have the Cal Cup. Last year's winner, Drexel might not be returning, so we'll have a new winner of the women's Cal Cup this year, and it should be a good race with Loyola Marymount, last year's second-place team, fighting for the cup against third and fourth place boats from last year, University of San Diego and Sacramento State. According to Head Coach Stesha Carle of University of San Diego, "I'm very excited to have my crews line up and test the speed of the USD Women's Rowing team this April!"
Next up, the juniors; stay tuned.
This year's San Diego Crew Classic (crewclassic.org) will be April 4&5, 2020 at Crown Point Shores. Please register here: crewclassic.team/reg.